A great speech is not about big gestures or performing, it’s about how you connect with the audience. Shabana shows us that a quiet, soft-spoken speaker with a great story can captivate an audience.

. Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the managing director of SOLA (School of Leadership, Afghanistan), a nonprofit that helps exceptional young Afghan women access education worldwide and jobs back home. She also raised funds through foundations and public talks across the US to build a high school for girls in her ancestral village, and to build wells on the outskirts of Kabul to give communities access to clean drinking water.